


Making Home in Familiar Places

by Talimee



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Domestic Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Schmoop, Slice of Life, off-screen sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 12:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8980714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talimee/pseuds/Talimee
Summary: The house will grow around them but they already made it their home.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aliax](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aliax/gifts).



> The title is a shameless rip-off from Aliax' story "Finding Home in the Most Unexpected Places" (http://archiveofourown.org/works/8052541/chapters/19879855) and the story itself plays in the same universe as "Home" and "Do not disturb" in my ongoing prompt-challenge. In fact it plays on the same day as "Home" (http://archiveofourown.org/works/6440122/chapters/15600697), only a few hours later.
> 
> This idea has haunted me for months and I am glad that I could finally write it down. I tried to crank the Fluff in here up to eleven. That was the only goal.

Title: **Making Home in Familiar Places**

Summary: The house will grow around them but they already made it their home.

Characters: Emil Västerström, Lalli Hotakainen

Pairing: Emil Västerström/Lalli Hotakainen

Setting: Östersund, Västerström mansion, around Y110

Rating: Teen

Warnings: off-screen boinking, attaching the name of male chickens to body parts

Tags: fluff, schmoop, kissing, I tried to crank it up to eleven, I might have a thing for summer afternoon-settings, slice of life

 

~*~

 

The late afternoon sun was filtering through the floor-length windows and cast glowing carpets of yellow and gold over the polished oak floorboards. The sound of wind in the treetops could be heard through a partially open window, along with the buzzing of fly-by-flies and the occasional noises of human employment drifting up from the city half a kilometre away.

The sounds of the house were of a more intimate nature. Somewhere on the ground level the loud ticking of a grandfather clock could be heard, wood was shifting in the comparable heat of the summer day, creaking and snapping ever so slightly. And from the empty chamber that was to become the master bedroom sighs and soft moans drifted along the vacant hallways and echoed dimly through the old mansion. They could not fill the vast emptiness of the house, but they created a living rhythm against the still anticipation which permeated everything.

A house remembers.

It is a dead thing, of course, but is it also a home. And so much heartfelt feeling is connected to it, so much of the lives of its owners flow into it that the inanimate matter cannot do but change under the barrage of emotional energy.

Some houses settle around their owners, growing old and creaky with them, never to rejuvenate once their original inhabitants are dead. Others need only a brush and a scrub-up to become new and youthful again, expectant of life, with every new generation that comes to live in them. And some houses should be burned and buried once the people who remember the deeds done in them are gone.

Not this house, though. This house had been waiting for years. It had never stood empty for long periods of time. People had been coming and going here daily during the last decades, when it served as the magistrate's office, but, unlike the family which had lived here before, the accountants had not invested much into this place. One day, they'd packed up their things, and the next day they were gone. A week went past – enough time for any scent to waft around and scatter and vanish through the many hidden vents – and at last a key was inserted hesitantly into the front door lock. Voices could be heard through the thick wood, then the key was turned. And the child that had been born here returned home.

Said child, a grown man now, and his husband were the ones piercing the mansion's silence with their mounting cries. Moans reverberated in the sun-warmed wood, gasps stirred the motes hanging in the air. Names were called, words whispered and louder and louder were the cries until, at last, they cumulated in shouts of mutually given ecstasy.

Although silence returned afterwards, the house was no longer still.

 

~*~

 

Water sloshed down from a copper pot, raising a cloud of steam as it plunged into the tin bath that was placed in front of the kitchen stove. Soapy suds danced on the surface of the bathwater already in the tub as Emil carefully dipped a foot into it and followed with the rest of his body. The water reached only up to his waist but at least his knees weren't sticking out over the rim.

“We can count ourselves lucky that the old tin bath was still in the shed”, he said to Lalli conversationally. “Otherwise we would have had made do with a soapy rag and the garden hose.”

Lalli half-turned from where he was standing but a lifted eyebrow was all the answer Emil got in reply.

“Don't try to tell me you've grown fond of being hosed down by freezing water”, Emil chuckled and started to wash himself. Even though it was summer and the old stove was burning with a bright fire his wet skin prickled where the draft from the corridor touched him.

“It'll never be as cold as Denmark”, Lalli whispered at last. He reached for a comb and pulled it carefully through his tangled wet hair. Emil looked up at the back of his head, transfixed for a moment by the even movement and the memory of rushed dips in freezing Danish waters before his gaze travelled downwards along Lalli's still limber form. Shoulder blades moving under pale skin, the valley of Lalli's spine, two dimples at the lower back, just peeking over the fluffy rim of the only towel they had found and which was draped around Lalli's hips as an unnecessary nod towards public decency. Only the fact that he was thoroughly spent prevented Emil's cock from stirring.

“Getting an eye-full?” Emil could hear the amusement in Lalli's voice as the Finn placed the comb down, before shaking his hair back into the unruly mop he preferred.

Startled out of his reverie, Emil said “I'm contemplating a new wallpaper for the breakfast room” as loftily as he could manage and turned his attention back to his own body.

“The hell you are”, Lalli smirked at him over his shoulder and reached for his shaving gear. “If your eyes were lenses I would be burning.”

Emil finished scrubbing his foot and dipped it back into the water before he gave in and watched his husband again. Lalli had propped a small hand-mirror on the shelf where once the cook's died herbs and spices had stood in colourful jars. Only a few straggling crumbs of pepper remained of that erstwhile bounty.

“You already are on fire today”, he said in a mixture of sultriness and matter-of-fact. “If I didn't knew better I'd say you plan to do me in every room of the house. Not that I'm complaining”, he added with a grin. “It's every guy's dream come true.”

Lalli snorted a bit of shaving cream at that. “What? Being sexed-up by me?” He wiped a fleck of foam away from the mirror with his thumb before he said in more serious tones: “I promised you we'd make this house our own.”

Emil stopped poking around his ear and thought back to his doubts earlier this day. He had feared that his childhood-home would feel strange and unfriendly to him after so many years of absence. And at first it had appeared so. So many things had been different compared to the memories he had treasured for more than twenty years. The emptiness of previously furniture-stuffed rooms had been frightening at first and the unfamiliar smells made him nervous. Wallpapers and colours were different from how he remembered and rooms which were light flooded in his recollections had become drab and dark over the years, stern and forbidding.

But bit by bit his joy had come back in the discovering of familiar things and had turned into enjoyment at last when he explored the rooms, attics and basements together with Lalli who saw everything here for the first time and had no qualms about the past. And he had _loved_ it when Lalli's adventurous side won out against his caution halfway through sighting the r ooms on the upper floor. Stepping up to him, the mage had taken Emil's head into his hands and kissed him urgently before lowering them onto the floor and taking Emil's clothes off and then just taking Emil.

With the memories replaying vividly in his head, Emil realized with a start that they had done just what Lalli had promised. Sometime between entering the mansion for the first time today and their climax in the upstairs bedroom his view of the house had shifted. They had made new memories lying on the dusty floorboards and leaning on a rickety old desk and pushed up against a wall papered with faded lilies of the valley. This was their place now.

“I wonder”, Emil finally said in an awed tone of voice, “which part of you came up with this idea – my husband or the crazy sex-magic wizard.”

“You're sure there is a difference?”, Lalli asked leisurely and turned around. Emil stared for a second and then broke out in a gale of laughter at the goatee Lalli had formed on his chin from shaving cream. The Finn watched with a faint smile for a minute how Emil gasped and sputtered before he turned back to the kitchen sink and washed his face.

Emil still wiped tears out of his eyes as the large wooden board, which had served as a extension to the kitchen table whenever needed, was placed across the tin bath's rim and Lalli sat down on it, a new pot of pre-heated water in his hands which he sat down next to the tub.

“You're taking forever today”, the Finn said in mock reproach and lifted the chipped cup they had used to scoop water over Lalli's head earlier. “I better help to speed things up before you get wrinkly all over.”

“I don't think I want your hands anywhere near my hair”, Emil said flippantly. “But give me a kiss and we will see if I can be persuaded.”

Lalli smirked but leaned forward and quickly brought their lips together once, then twice. Before Emil could say anything Lalli's hand cupped his jaw and the Finn turned his head to deepen their third kiss. Emil's eyes slid closed and his hands slipped into Lalli's still damp hair of their own accord and held him in place as he parted his lips and met Lalli in the middle. This was what he craved for: A moment in time just for themselves. No children around, no pets, no neighbours, no duties – just Lalli's hands on him and Lalli's tongue dancing leisurely with his own. He felt bodiless when they parted but kept their foreheads together, floating and flushed and slightly out of breath while his cock, Emil couldn't believe it, announced an eagerness for a fourth round of marital conjunction.

“I think I will trust you with my scalp”, he whispered through a smile, loathe to part the close proximity with his partner but he made himself sit up and his hands slide downwards over Lalli's neck, his chest and stomach, to come to rest on his husband's thighs. His fingertips brushed the crinkly fabric of the towel, itching to grab it and pull it away from Lalli's body but he restrained himself. There would be time for that later.

On a wink from Lalli he tilted his head back and allowed his spouse to pour water over his head and work the grainy soap they had into a good-enough lather. A smile spread over his lips as he was reminded of similar scenes playing out in reversed roles, nearly twenty years ago in Denmark. Lalli thought along the same lines, if the soft smirk in the corners of his mouth and the deepening laugh-lines around his eyes were any indication. Then the Finn's gaze wandered down to the exposed expanse of Emil's throat and chest and the Swede felt himself grow hot again at the hunger he could read there.

 _Later_ , he tried to stall himself, but his hands treacherously returned to Lalli's thighs and caressed every square-centimetre of skin they could reach. He sought out and held Lalli's gaze when the Finn doused his head with clear water and felt himself sink into Lalli's large eyes again, becoming weightless and dizzy under the ministrations of Lalli's fingers and his burning look.

“I must have done something pretty amazing in my former life”, Emil whispered breathless and leaned forward until their foreheads were touching again. “Because nothing what I did in this one deserves a gift like you.”

Lalli's steady fingers in his hair stilled and Emil imagined them trembling. But before he could draw away and check on him, Lalli resumed to rake his fingertips through Emil's hair, a steady and solid caress instead of words. Emil's own hands lay on Lalli's thighs and he relished the sensation of warm skin and muscles under his fingertips.

“I love you”, he said into the silence of the summer evening.

Lalli's hands stilled before they wandered down and cupped around his face, lifting it up for a kiss that left Emil's lips tingling and his heart fluttering under the onslaught of emotion Lalli could not say but showed him every single day.

 

 


End file.
